With Nintendo's new ability to brick consoles, Sony casting out PS3 hackers and Geohot taking a timely 'vacation', video game piracy is very much back in the news.

But is there a better way to tackle those gleefully infringing on publishers' copyright than simply wielding the ban hammer?

Christofer Sundberg, boss of Just Cause creator Avalanche studios in Sweden, certainly believes there might just be.

Sundberg is a long-term opponent of 'always online' DRM measures, and is keen for the video games industry to look at other ways of curbing piracy - including the rarely-discussed possibility of job interviews.


"Piracy is always worrying," he told CVG. "It's never been a helpful thing. We'll let our publishers fight that battle. But I mean, 50 percent of the people that work for me come from a hacker background - that's true."

When asked whether approaching leading hackers and asking them to put their programming skills to good use was a wise idea, Sundberg added:

"Oh yeah. I absolutely think that's a fair approach, to think about how these people can fit on the right side of the law. It's one way, at least. Perhaps the truest pirates are too much down the road of anarchy to ever work with you in a proper way; these are the guys who see us as evil!

"But in Sweden the [hacking] scene was huge. We're the home of the Pirate Bay, you know. As a studio, we've found that there's definitely a lot of talent [in the hacking community]."

Sundberg once again labelled DRM measures as "stupid".

"The DRM does not stop piracy," he said, "it just punishes the people who have actually paid for the game. It's completely useless. Forcing people to be online all the time and so on doesn't show respect to the people who actually buy PC games."

Sundberg's solution to denting video game piracy doesn't stop at cherry picking the brightest from the hacking community, however.

He also believes that better, exclusive PC games - powered by constant updates - would reduce illegal software sharing.

"We've always made PC games, but we actually don't like [the development process]," said Sundberg, whose Just Cause games have been hugely popular on the format.

"I've always been of the opinion that we should design PC games for the PC players. PC players and console players are completely two different types of consumer. It's always unfair to not design the game for the consumer you're targeting. The PC version is always a [second thought], like: 'Oh, and we need a PC version too.'


"You end up just doing a port, so there's not a lot of time, budget or creative thinking going into using the PC. I think that's quite sad. We [as an industry] should take the PC platform, more seriously. Everyone is just complaining about piracy on the PC, but when it comes to in-game DLC or social connectivity, the options on PC compared to console are endless. I would like at some point to do a really good PC game designed specifically for PC players."

He added: "I think piracy wouldn't be as much of an issue if there were better PC games out there. We could just scrap the whole concept of stupid DRM."

Strong stuff. What are your thoughts, readers?

I'm with Notch on this one. Generally if someone goes to effort of acquiring a pirate copy of a game then they were never a prospective buyer, and no sale has been lost.

What if a game leaks early? Wait 1 month for it to be in shops or download it there and then. A prospective buyer might be tempted, download it and never buy it when it goes into retail. Sale lost.

What if a game leaks early? Wait 1 month for it to be in shops or download it there and then. A prospective buyer might be tempted, download it and never buy it when it goes into retail. Sale lost.

D_M - *buys homefront for fullprice* "dude this game is strawberry floating short and gooseberry fool, wtf?"
publisher/dev - *trollface* "sucks to be you, paid for it already? Shut up then. Games nowadays have huge budgets, we get less money, poor me, poor me, poor me, games nowadays usually are only 2 hours long so be happy we made it 4 hours, some more shitty excuses"

D_M - "I'd known all this gooseberry fool beforehand I'd never have bought the game for that price".


Seems to me like piracy in certain cases even stops developers/publishers from robbing their customers.

Valve have a near perfect business model with Steam. Launch prices are generally pretty sensible now, and even if you do end up paying more than you would for a boxed copy you're getting all the benefits of Steam on top of your purchase. The game will be updated automatically, you can download it as many times as you want on as many PCs as you like, you can take screenshots to be saved in the cloud, and in some cases you can even save your saved games in the cloud too. All at no extra cost. Then there's all the community stuff of course. The bi-weekly deals and sales are the real killer though. Many people may not be willing to pay £30 for a game, but at the crazy prices they can go for in the sales I imagine they even tempt former pirates to shell out. I've paid for games in the Steam sales that I already own on other formats simply for the convenience!

What's the point in pirating a game that isn't worth paying for?

What's the point in pirating a game that isn't worth paying for?

Good post Lagamorph.

Lagomorph..... Is ..... Right

You didn't know it wasn't worth paying for, therefore you pirated it. No one's going to bother pirating a really gooseberry fool game, but there are plenty of borderline games, you may want to try. Also, with PCs there's the matter of how well the game runs on your rig. Something a review is never going to tell you.

So you only decided you weren't going to buy Homefront after you'd completed it? Yarrrrr! Heave ho horatio!

Edit: Not that I'm calling you a bad person. Arrr!

Firstly. The GR term is 'tafloading'.

Secondly, I played through it on my first go. Little did poor old me realise it was to end so abruptly. If I'd have known, I'd have stopped myself before the end.

I'm with Notch on this one.

Minecraft fellow, right? He the one who was so against piracy because they really hurt the smaller, independent developers, but then changed his mind when his game had made him so much money that he barely noticed it? That one?